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This letter may be fake, but I once attended a reunion of Iwo Jima vets where one of them said he had a the time of his life hanging out on a beach and "shooting Japs in the head". The audience gasped.

I saw a book that studied the psychology of war, can't remember the title now. The conclusion that the psychologists/people doing the study reached was that a small percentage of people are "natural killers," meaning that, though they are normal, functioning members of society, not psychotic at all, the concept of death and the act of killing have no appreciable effect on them. While soldiers can be conditioned to kill, the ones that aren't natural killers tend to break and wind up with PTSD and the like, while the natural killers react to it more like a competitive sport.

Honestly, I can see it. Different brains are wired differently, so it doesn't seem far fetched that some are capable of hunting and killing other humans without being full blown psychotics.

Care to elaborate on that? I'm not an expert but I've devoted a decent amount of my spare time to the study of world war two and I've never seen anything about how the Iwo Jima landing was a piece of cake. One of the more costly landings in the entire pacific campaign if memory serves.

The first wave landed without immediate resistance. Kuribayashi's strategy was to let the Americans land and fight them once they reached the network of caves and concealed positions further inland. This was a significant departure from the tactical plan of previous island defenses by the IJA in the war.

Ah, I see what you're getting at now and you're absolutely correct. The first wave took considerable casualties, just not necessarily on the beaches. Looking back on my comments I didn't really say what I meant to say. My bad.

It doesn't seem like it was much of a pause, maybe a handful of minutes?. Elements of the first wave were definitely on the beach and everything was quiet at first. Of course, once the show started, it got extremely violent, even by Pacific theater standards.

We have to look at Iwo Jima in the context of the war at that time. Kuribayashi and every cogent officer on either side knew that the war was over, and that Iwo Jima would fall. The plan was to cause as much damage as possible, rather than prevent our invasion. Influencing American public opinion was probably the best shot Kuribayashi had at preventing a full on invasion of Japan.

My grandfather was a firecontrolman on one of the cruisers bombarding Iwo Jima prior to, and during the battle. He recalled looking through shore glasses and seeing flamethrowers in use on the rocky slopes.

Serial killers aren't usually interested in just killing. You'll often find there is either a sexual component, they are very elaborate about their killing and make a game of it and not being caught or they think they are being commanded to kill/it is their purpose in life to kill certain types of people.

Well, since there are now lots of people in the US Army who've been given a choice of jail time or the Army by a judge, I'd say the odds are higher of getting criminal misfits on a murder spree than they were in WWII. Recent Army-Gone-Wild stories bear this out. Atrocities in Iraq and Afganistan.

From the Odyssey on human, particularly western, culture has always valued war as something that brings men together, brings out the best in men, unifies you in purpose, and lets you exercise your power over another. Anyone who values but pretends not to enjoy that experience is lying to you or to themselves.

Soldiers are expected to get PTSD, not say "That was fun!"

They're expected to get PTSD and say "that was fun!". It's rare that someone gets one but not the other.

Yes, war is seen as something glorious and all that. However that's mostly the shared struggle and hardship, all that has to be overcome. The actual act of killing another human being, and dealing with the death of close friends, is not the part that people like.

They're expected to get PTSD and say "that was fun!". It's rare that someone gets one but not the other.

You're talking about the glorification of the machismo and hardship of war through romantic literature and film which is entirely different from being there and spending long weeks and months waiting, marching, sitting in mud while your feet start to rot, marching and waiting some more until you get into the shit and see your friends stabbed and shot, experience the emotional turmoil of taking another man's life, seeing limbs blown off by grenades, and being deafened by artillery fire.

You're talking about the glorification of the machismo and hardship of war through romantic literature and film which is entirely different from being there and spending long weeks and months waiting, marching, sitting in mud while your feet start to rot, marching and waiting some more until you get into the shit and see your friends stabbed and shot, experience the emotional turmoil of taking another man's life, seeing limbs blown off by grenades, and being deafened by artillery fire.

I agree it sounds awful, which is why it's hard to explain why few soldiers wish they had never served at all. A good explanation is that it is both awful and has redeeming qualities, like brotherhood, thrill, daring and heartracing events, etc.

It's the result of psychological trauma and it pervades all aspect of life. Flashbacks, nightmares, extreme anxiety, rage, prolonged depression, intense aversion to stimuli associated with the stress (in soldiers' cases, typically loud noises and bright lights). People struggling with PTSD are impaired socially, professionally, emotionally, or all of the above.

I really think you're downplaying the horror of war when you talk about things like "thrill, daring, heart racing events." Brotherhood, yes, but the things you might describe as "thrilling and heart racing," soldiers typically describe as terrifying and chaotic. War is brief spurts of hell punctuating long periods of boredom, manual labor and suffering at the mercy of the elements.

It's the result of psychological trauma and it pervades all aspect of life. Flashbacks, nightmares, extreme anxiety, rage, prolonged depression, intense aversion to stimuli associated with the stress (in soldiers' cases, typically loud noises and bright lights). People struggling with PTSD are impaired socially, professionally, emotionally, or all of the above.

They're still humans capable of happiness and pleasant reflection.

but the things you might describe as "thrilling and heart racing," soldiers typically describe as terrifying and chaotic.

I implore you to ask more veterans about their experience. The near universal sentiment that I've heard is that it is simultaneously the most horrid, exhilarating, life affirming, hellish experience one can undertake. Soldiers are frequently heard to say in interviews on the subject that war is a rush unlike anything else, it makes beer taste better, colors brighter, life more valuable, etc, and yet also is combined with seeing death all around you, including those of your friends.

We should remember the tremendous contribution of the Queen Mother to the war effort: as the BBC pointed out, she 'bravely remained in London beside her husband' during the war. This contrasts sharply with the actions of my grandfather who, on the declaration of war immediately left his wife and children and pissed off, first to France, then North Africa, Italy, France (again) and finally Germany. The shame will always be with us.

And:

Like the Queen Mum, my grandfather was a frequent visitor to the East End during the dark days of the blitz, but he was never hailed as a hero by the people of London. That's because he flew Heinkel bombers for the Luftwaffe.
Werner Hoffman, Munich .

Came here ho ask if it was from the letterbocks. The star gives it away. I love Viz - I think my favourite letter was from guy who said he got a stiffy everytime he saw Nigella Lawson lick jam off a spoon, and when his wife did it, he didn't get a stiffy. He wanted to know the brand of jam that Nigella uses, so he could get his wife using the correct brand of jam.

I'm good friends with a Vietnam vet, he was a Marine infantry officer. He gave an interview to a local high school U.S. history class about the war last year. One student asked him what he thought of the war. His response was something along the lines of, "It was great. I got to shoot the place up, burn down some villages, and kill communists. Hell, they even paid me to do it!"

Perhaps you had to be there, but I was struggling not to laugh as the teacher's eyes did a remarkable imitation of saucers and half the students gasped.

This is from a magazine/comic strip for adults (teenage humor with loads of tits and wanking) in the U.K called The VIZ im fairly certain. They have fake, tongue in cheek, letters in a letters from readers section.